Roosevelt (19 page)

Was the President picturing a Nazi-occupied nation, or a Nazi-besieged one? The speech was not clear on this and other matters. It seemed to reflect the struggle over its composition and the President’s indecision over strategy. Roosevelt, though speaking in his usual arresting way, meandered on and on, from the geography of Nazi strategy, to the Battle of the Atlantic, to the need of responding to Hitler before he came too close—“Our Bunker Hill of tomorrow may be several thousand miles from Boston”—to a statement of national policy that offered little that was new, to a rebuttal of “sincere” pacifists and a denunciation of the “sinister” ones. He did release the alarming figures of the rate of German sinkings of merchant ships, and he made his strongest statement to date of his determination to deliver supplies to Britain by whatever means was necessary. But he did not say how he would do this beyond patrolling; he made no mention of transferring fleet units to the Atlantic, and he ignored the crucial question of actual escort of convoys. But toward the end he achieved a stirring climax:

“As the President of a united and determined people, I say solemnly:

“We reassert the ancient American doctrine of freedom of the seas.

“We reassert the solidarity of the twenty-one American Republics and the Dominion of Canada in the preservation of the independence of the hemisphere….

“We in the Americas will decide for ourselves whether, and when, and where, our American interests are attacked or our security is threatened.

“We are placing our armed forces in strategic military positions.

“We will not hesitate to use our armed forces to repel attack….

“Therefore…I have tonight issued a proclamation that an unlimited national emergency exists and requires the strengthening of our defense to the extreme limit of our national power and authority….”

Soon after the talk, while Roosevelt happily listened to Irving Berlin play “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” and other presidential favorites, telegrams began to come to the White House. Later in the evening Sherwood found the President immensely relieved. Sitting in bed surrounded by hundreds of wires he said: “They’re ninety-five per cent favorable! And I figured I’d be lucky to get an even break in this speech.” The newspapers in the morning gave him strong editorial support.

The militants were relieved, too; however lacking in specifics, the speech was a moving statement of national resolution and a call to vigorous action. But then came one of the Rooseveltian backtracks that had so often reduced his associates to despair. At a press conference next day, with plaudits still ringing in his ears, the President denied that he planned to use the Navy for convoying escorts, or to ask Congress to change the Neutrality Act, or to issue executive orders to effectuate his proclamation. These comments, Stimson lamented, almost undid the effect of his speech; even Hopkins was perplexed by the shift. The President’s determination was soon put to the test. On June 11 reports began to arrive from survivors landing in Brazil of the torpedoing of their ship, the American freighter
Robin Moor,
by a U-boat in the South Atlantic three weeks earlier. Hopkins urged his chief to use the incident as reason to escalate from naval observation patrols to a security patrol to protect American-flag ships. After his first flush of anger, the President refused to do this; he was content to report the sinking to Congress as an example of the kind of Nazi threat he had pictured in his address.

The President still had no strategy except a strategy of no strategy. His main general policy was to wait on events—not any event, but one mighty event—to create the context for action. Such an event was Hitler’s invasion of Russia. By the end of June the world was watching the Red Army at bay—and watching London and Washington, too.

So quick, eloquent, and audacious was Churchill’s response to Russia’s plight that for years his words distorted peoples’ memories of the events of late June 1941. “We are resolved to destroy Hitler and every vestige of the Nazi regime,” Churchill told the nation
barely twelve hours after hearing of the invasion. “From this nothing will turn us—nothing.…It follows, therefore, that we shall give whatever help we can to Russia and the Russian people….” Hitler’s invasion of Russia, he said, was no more than a prelude to an assault on Britain itself.

Such was the steely rhetoric, but actually the first days of what would become the United Nations were marked by suspicion and near-paralysis. Communication between London and Moscow had been almost nonexistent during the spring months: Stalin and Molotov had kept a frosty distance from Sir Stafford Cripps, the British Ambassador; Churchill and Eden had doubted that Soviet Ambassador Ivan M. Maisky in London had the confidence of his chiefs. The Kremlin had smoldered over Britain’s refusal to recognize its writ in the Baltic. Some Russians now wondered if Churchill had instigated the Nazi attack; certainly he wanted it, they judged, and was this the real purpose of the Rudolf Hess caper? Moscow seemed ominously quiet even after Churchill’s address.

There were fears in London that the Red Army could not hold out for more than a few weeks. Would the Russians then surrender, or even join Hitler in an attack on Britain? A hundred Nazi divisions smashing and clawing their way east could not overcome years of mutual suspicion and hostility.

Washington had been even cooler than London in its formal posture toward the Soviets. For some weeks Hull and Welles had been parleying about relatively minor matters with the Russian Ambassador, Constantine Oumansky, whom they found fretful and stubborn. Only a week before the invasion the State Department had formalized a position of undertaking no approach to Moscow, treating Russian approaches with reserve, offering concessions only for a strict
quid pro quo,
and making clear to the Russians that improved relations were more important to Moscow than to Washington. Many in the American Army, as in the British, doubted Russia’s capacity to stop the Wehrmacht.

Roosevelt’s feelings toward Moscow were more mixed than his subordinates’. Often since the auspicious days of late 1933, when he had recognized the Bolshevik government, the President had been frustrated by Soviet policy; he positively disliked Oumansky and saw as little of him as possible. He had no illusions about the dictatorial nature of the Soviet regime, its secretiveness, rigidity, and greed for territory or satellites. On the other hand, he was somewhat optimistic about the Russians holding out—partly because of heartening words from former Ambassador Joseph E. Davies, at this time in Wisconsin. He was confident of his talent for working with any anti-Hitler government. He had a vague optimism about the Soviets’ long-run potential for neighborly relations with the
democracies. Above all, he feared the possibility of Communist expansion far less than the fact of fascist aggression, and hence wanted to buck up the Soviet defenders—at least with words.

He approved a limp State Department declaration that while fascism and Communism were both bad, fascism was so much worse that any assistance to the anti-Hitler forces, no matter what the source, would benefit American security. He told reporters that “of course we are going to give all the aid we possibly can to Russia,” but he was vague as to when and how—and Britain still had priority on American arms production. When Fulton Oursler, of
Liberty,
sent him the draft of his first postinvasion editorial, on the theme “To Hell with Communism” and sharply attacking the Soviet regime, Roosevelt replied that “if I were at your desk I would write an editorial condemning the Russian form of dictatorship equally with the German form of dictatorship—but at the same time, I would make it clear that the immediate menace at this time to the security of the United States lies in the threat of Hitler’s armies….”

So Roosevelt’s first reactions to Russia’s plight were sympathetic, expedient, and cautious. Certainly he would issue no clarion call for a grand coalition against fascism or even for all-out aid to Russia.

He did take a couple of immediate steps, partly as trial balloons. He unfroze forty million dollars of Soviet funds in the United States, but made clear to the press that American aid to Russia would be effective only in the event of a long war, and he was not sure of Soviet needs anyway. His other action was a most effective piece of inaction: by failing to invoke the Neutrality law against Russia he insured that Vladivostok would stay open for American shipping. Otherwise he was content to let Churchill take the lead.

Paradoxically, at the time—and of the highest importance for the future—the first impact of the Nazi invasion of Russia was to push Washington and London closer together behind the Atlantic First strategy. In warning that Hitler’s attack on Russia was no more than a prelude to his assault on Britain, Churchill was establishing an even heavier claim on American aid. In Washington, too, pressure on Roosevelt intensified less to send aid to Russia than to escalate naval operations in the Atlantic. Thirty hours after news of the invasion, Stimson wrote to Roosevelt that he had been doing little but reflecting on the implications of this “almost providential occurrence” for sharply stepped-up Anglo-American operations in the Atlantic. It would take Hitler six weeks to two months to clean up Russia, Knox told the President, and that time must not go by “without striking hard—the sooner the better.” Within forty-eight hours of news of the attack Admiral Stark was telling the
Commander in Chief that he should immediately seize the psychological opportunity to start escorting ships openly. Knox stated publicly that the nation had a “god-given chance” to “clear the path across the Atlantic.” Like Stimson, he evidently felt that the Lord was against the Russians, perhaps because the Reds did not recognize Him.

For a moment the President veered toward such a direct approach. He authorized the Navy to escort American shipping, “including shipping of any nationality, which may join such convoys” west of Iceland. Here was a crucial step—the escorting of ships, inevitably including British ships, which would seek the shelter of a United States Navy-protected convoy. Then the President retreated. The actual operations orders of July 25 postponed the escorting of other than American ships.

Once again Knox and the other militants were in despair. Why did their chief not take the direct logical step of simply—and openly—protecting all friendly shipping in the West Atlantic? Their chief had his reasons. He was wary both of congressional opposition and of Far Eastern implications. But more than that, he was waiting on events to propel the nation toward full intervention in the Atlantic. Some events a President can create, however, and the biggest event of July was the American occupation of Iceland.

This project, long in the making, had glinted with complexities. The British had taken over Iceland—a pistol pointed at England, America, and Canada, as Churchill saw it—after its mother country, Denmark, had been overrun in 1940. The British and American military agreed early in 1941 that the United States would defend the island in the event of war. Later, Churchill, in the face of a feared Nazi attack, had hoped that Roosevelt would take it over, partly to relieve British forces, but mainly to hasten combined operations by his and Roosevelt’s navies along the great supply routes of the North Atlantic. The President would act only on the invitation of the Icelandic Prime Minister, but this gentleman wanted American protection without having to embarrass his Nazi-supervised government in Copenhagen by asking for it. Patiently Roosevelt worked out a delicate minuet of invitation and acceptance; on July 7 he was ready to announce that the Navy had just arrived in Iceland in order to supplement and eventually replace the British.

Roosevelt could have had no doubt as to the seriousness of his move into Iceland. On June 17 Admiral Stark sent Hopkins a copy of his proposed instructions to the 1st Marine Brigade for “operations” in Iceland. The task:
“IN COOPERATION WITH THE BRITISH GARRISON, DEFEND ICELAND AGAINST HOSTILE ATTACK.”
He
wanted the President to approve the order, Stark told Hopkins, because there was so much “potential dynamite” in it. The normal thing to do, he went on, was to put the 4,000 American troops under British command, as the British wanted, but he could not go quite that far. “I have, however, as the President will note, ordered the force to cooperate with the British (in defending a British base operated by the British against the enemy). I realize that this is practically an act of war.” Stark got the words he wanted at the bottom of the page—“OK FDR.”

The American occupation of Iceland, Churchill told the House of Commons, was an event of “first-rate political and strategic importance”—one of the signal events of the war. Since large American and British traffic would now have to pass through those perilous waters, “I daresay it may be found in practice mutually advantageous for the two navies to assist each other….” So they did, but the nature of the assistance was ambiguous. What were Roosevelt’s ships and planes to do in “escorting, covering, and patrolling, as required by circumstances”? Were they to shoot first? On what grounds? At what targets? Or should they wait to be attacked? Decisive events seemed likely to turn on obscure and fugitive factors—visibility in the brumous Atlantic, communication in heavy seas, perceptions of the foe’s intentions on the part of young commanders perhaps longing for action.

The uncertainty did not bother Roosevelt, who always thrived on disarray. At the very least he was realizing the simple aim of helping Britain in the North Atlantic; but much more, he was quietly challenging the Nazis on a crucial ocean front—one that they had taken up themselves when Hitler in the early spring had extended the German blockade and combat area to cover Iceland. Roosevelt would not yet order his Navy to shoot on sight; he would not yet openly escort British ships. He would let these things happen by day-to-day chance and necessity in the fog of Atlantic battle.

If ever there was a point when Roosevelt knowingly crossed some threshold between aiding Britain in order to stay out of war and aiding Britain by joining in the war, July 1941 was probably the time. Others, including Morgenthau and Ickes, had crossed this threshold earlier, and more decisively. If Roosevelt was still waiting on events, he was now nudging them in a direction that would deepen the cold war in the Atlantic and produce a crisis.